


Keep Me From Falling To You

by honeyedlion



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Horror, Nightmares, Sibling Incest, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 20:23:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyedlion/pseuds/honeyedlion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some stories are more than a happily ever after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Me From Falling To You

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even.

                “Come here, pretty _mausi.”_ The witch called to her. She was shadowed in rags and dirt, and as she stepped towards where Gretel stood frozen, her stiff apron scraped the ground like sheaves of dry wheat rustling together. “Come here, and let me take a little bite.”

                Her grin was a curved sickle, shining before the reaping.

                “I’m so hungry for a bite of something sweet.”

:

                “Shh, Gretel. Hush now.”

                She clung to the white of his night shirt, burying her face into his neck. He smelled warm and coppery, the smell of sleeping and boy. Her cheeks were sticky with drying tears, and her mouth tasted like blood, heavy iron on her tongue.

                “She was here.” Gretel whispered, and her voice came out an aching cough. Hansel’s hands traced looping circles on the back of her nightgown, steady and warm. “She was here, and I couldn’t move, and she-“

                “Shh, liebling. All is well, we’re home.” Hansel murmured into her hair.

                Gretel watched the moon pour in through the window, and thought of white pebbles shining like drops of silver all along the ground.

:

                “Is it good?”

                Father watched her, his beetle eyes staring across the table at her, boring into her face. Gretel nodded, trying to wipe the sticky syrup off her chin.

                Beside her, Hansel scraped his fork across the china plate. Her father blinked slow and heavy. His face was lined with more than years, but she could only see his eyes, a cold black.

                Hansel said that they had inherited their mother’s eyes. Sometimes when she couldn’t fall asleep he’d come and curl up beside her under the blankets, and tell her stories about their mother. What she smelled like (blueberries and hay), what she looked like (‘pale skin like you, Gretel, and eyes like running water’). Gretel had no memory of their mother, but she wished she had known her.

                Hansel had told her that she had died bringing Gretel to them.

                (‘It’s alright, because it’s you, Gretel.’ He’d whispered sitting curled inside the iron cage. Hansel’s cheeks were plump like a rat and he always looked fevered and swollen, overcooked.  He’d gained so much weight, that she worried if he could make it out of the cage. ‘I miss her, and things are hard, but you are the best thing God has ever given me.’

                Later the witch had beaten her, for missing ash in the fireplace. Gretel hadn’t been able to see for the tears.)

                “That’s good. I want you to eat up, get nice and fat.”

                Gretel could hear Hansel’s fork scraping the plate, clearing it of the sticky syrup.

                “I think I’d like to go outside.” She told her father, and fled as fast as she could.

:

                She was back inside the gingerbread house. Gretel could tell because it smelled of mold and damp, berries rotting on the vine.

                “Just get in and prime the oven.” Her stepmother said. Her long red hair hung in curled waves down her back. She smelled like hard soap, and her hands were mottled red and white from the cold. It was so cold. “Are you stupid, girl? Thank god I never had children of my own.”

                Hansel already sat in the oven. His plump face was steaming with heat, and as she watched sweat beaded on his forehead like juice on a roasted hen. His eyes ran clear liquid down his cheeks.

                Gretel stepped toward the oven, and it was already baking, already hot enough to burn her. Her body felt crisped just being near it. Her hair curled up around her face.

                “Come here, _mausi_.” Hansel’s mouth opened, and candy rolled out, melted and running down his chin. The voice of the witch echoed all around her.

                “I want to EAT something.”

:

                This night, Hansel didn’t come for her, and she wept alone, wrapped in a nest of expensive blankets.

:

                Underneath their loft, she could hear the voice of their stepmother rising and falling. It was familiar, but never soothing. Every few moments their father would chime in, a low rumble, but he was soon silenced. She could hear Hansel breathing lightly beside her, and she fumbled under the blankets for his hand.

                He squeezed it tight when she reached him.

                “It’s alright.” He had told her, eyes a clear sky blue like her own, cheeks pink and pale in turns like her own. “God won’t forsake us, you’ll see. Mother told me that God will always watch over us, because we are his children.”

                She had nodded, and tried not to listen to him cry when he found the door locked that night.

:

                She had her own room now. They had moved closer to town, and father had bought a cart, and a horse with the jewels they had brought him.

                (‘We’ll take these.’ Hansel said, and he was panting just from climbing the stairs. ‘We’ll give them to father, and then he’ll have to take us back.’

                ‘I don’t want to go back.’ She’d begged. ‘Please Hansel. Please.’

                ‘Then where shall we go?’ He hadn’t been shouting but it had been a close thing. She felt stretched thin from weariness and lack of food. Even her voice was brittle.

                ‘Away.’ She’d whispered, but that was later, and far too late.)

                They had a bigger house, and they ate meat every night, and butter with their bread. They could put as much wood on the fire as they wanted, and she knew if she asked for anything, she could have it.

                Father had told her so.

                She wanted Hansel to start praying again. She wanted to never walk into the house and see the big black shape of Father’s coat and for a cold moment think it was Her. She wanted her wrists to be fat enough to hide her bones again, and Hansel’s chin to lose the pale half-moon it had gained.

                Instead, she said that she was fine. Father had nodded sharply. He had always had trouble looking at her (‘blue eyes, just like hers Gretel, like sapphires’) but lately he had trouble looking at either of them. His eyes slid over them, blank and dark.

                Except sometimes late at night, he’d watch her while she sat in the living room patching a shirt, or weaving on their loom, and his eyes would be heavy and dark. And she’d wonder the question neither her nor Hansel had ever dared to ask.

                Where did Stepmother go?

:

                Gretel woke early, and the house was grey around her, a cold light coming in from the windows. She felt lazy, clogged with sleep, the new straw mattress she had too soft. It made her dreams dizzy, hard to pull from.

                She shook her head, sliding from between thick blankets. Every step was a chill, straight through the thin cloth of her gown. She couldn’t wait for summer, when the sun would push through, and pour hot and clean over them again.

                She changed into a dress, her fingers fumbling the ribbons and lacings. Before she had worn a simple shift, long enough to keep her warm, but short enough so that when she ran to the well to fetch water for porridge, nothing caught on her hem.

                Now everything was tied in, and strapped down. She’d tried to tell father, but he’d simply waved her away.

                (And then a day later while shopping for fish, two women across the way:

                ‘Do you see that? A little bit of money falls into his lap, and next thing you know-‘

                ‘I heard he was trying to snag some nobles son. She’s nothing but bone!’

                Her hand had tightened on the fish so hard, the shining scales had cut into her palm, and she’d bled all the way home.)

                The town around them was silent, and except for the echoing space and the cold, she could imagine they were back in their home next to the woods. Hansel would still be sleeping, the lazy lie-abed, hay from their tick woven haphazardly through soft golden curls. Father would have left before it was light; all that was left to show he had been there would be the mess around the fire, and an empty coat hook.

                Stepmother slept late too, sometimes until midafternoon, and so Gretel would set the fire.

                Now they had the woman come in from down the hill, and start their fires, do simple mending, and cook meals. She was nice enough, but she was no one Gretel knew.

                Except it wasn’t home, and Gretel had nowhere to go except the big dining chairs, to let her feet swing and her mind wander, until Hansel got up to go to school.

:

                “Let me see how plump you are.” Her voice was a crow’s call, high on cold evening, and Gretel stood, hands fisted in her dirty skirts, as Hansel stretched a bone through the bars. His wrist was almost too wide to fit through the tiny bars.

                “Bah, close enough.” The witch had spit on the ground, before fixing Gretel with one mean black eye.

                “C’mere girl. We need to ready the fire.”

:

                “Gretel?”

                She bolted upright, her eyes wide with panic. Hansel stood in the doorway to her room, his nightshirt ghostly in the moonlight.

                She swallowed roughly.

                “I’m here.”

                He padded across the room toward her, and it was only up close that she could see how he had grown fat and swollen under the witches care. Even so, his eyes were as blue as hers, his hair the same angelic tumble of curls she’d seen her whole life. It made her smile, despite the dream.

                She slid to one side of the bed, and he bundled in with her. His hands slid around her waist, seeking heat, after the cold walk over. His hands were huge against her, and she realized slowly that it wasn’t because of the witch. He had grown, she realized, finally awake enough to be this close, and gauge the difference. He was inches taller, and his shoulder’s broader than hers.

                How many months had they been in the forest? How many months had they been back? She was trying to think, when he pressed his nose into the warm skin behind her ear, an icy shock.

                She squealed, and reared back, and he was grinning at her, mouth red and sweet.

                Quiet and she snuggled back into him slowly. His hands, warmer now, were rubbing against her back, making her sigh and press against the flat plane of his chest. Everything smelled like hay, and boy, and she drifted to sleep, a small smile pressed into the skin of his collar.

:

                Hansel stood sweeping the hearth, the witch’s long, raggedy broom scraping the dirt floor into harsh chicken scratches. Her father sat at the table, and her stepmother sat across from him, drinking something from a tall clay cup.

                They witch stood in front of the oven, the heat curling and wreathing around her, making the air shimmer like hellfire.

                “I’m hungry.” The stepmother said, her chin sharp like a cat, and her eyes tracked Hansel’s movements lazily. “When is it time to eat?”

                “…this day our daily bread-“Hansel murmured, but his muddled words were cut off by the witches cackle.

                “Let me see your hand, girly! And no fooling this time.” The witch pressed against the bars to her cage, and her breath smelled fetid, dying and hot. “I want to really feel you.”

                “And lead us not into temptation-”

                “I’m HUNGRY.”

                “Give me your hand, girl!”

                “-but deliver us from evil, Gretel.”

:

                “Gretel. Gretel!”

                Hands were shaking her roughly, and she was crying, before she was truly awake, pressing herself into him, and filling his arms with her body.

                His voice was a murmuring stream of beautiful words, pressed along her overheated skin. Gretel felt shaky, trembling, and she clutched at him, heart greedy for his warmth.

                “Shh.” He whispered into her hair. “Shh.”

                She wanted to scream, and to stopper the sound she pressed her lips to his, a mockery of the kisses they had shared as children. His mouth was soft on hers, breath sticky and sugared, as though he had been eating sweets before bed, and she wanted to lick the taste from his mouth. Wanted to hollow him out, and live inside of him, safe and warm.

                He pulled back with a gasp, and she could see the whites of his eyes, like a startled horse.

                “Please.” She whispered, his mouth still hanging open. “Please. Please, Hansel, please. Please, please, please, plea-“

                And then his mouth was on hers, the sweet weight of his body pressing hers into the mattress. She slid her hands along his skin, warming them in all the places where he was feverish with heat, until his mouth was opening and shutting, opening and shutting above her, and her grin was vicious with hunger, a sickle before the reaping.

                He painted her with warm satisfaction, and she scooped it to her mouth with both hands, spreading it like honey along her lower lip until she could swallow.

                Soon enough his eyes were dark with want (hunger) again, and she welcomed him into her. She’d take his everything.

                She’d eat him all up.

:

                The next morning she woke up to sun. Hansel was kneeling beside the bed by her feet, his hands clasped childishly in front of him, brow a small furrow as his lips moved with the familiar words. She felt sore, and stuffed full, an echo of the night before.

                She waited for him to finish, before curling close to where he leaned against the bed, her smile a small, living thing.

                “Did you sleep well?” He asked politely, but his blue eyes were a shade warmer, and she smiled, all teeth.

                “I slept very well.” She answered, and his hand was warm, exactly the right size in hers. “Thank you, brother mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come and [prime the oven](honeyedlion.tumblr.com). Or submit a request.


End file.
